Bloom County

The second and most famous of a series of comic strips by Berke Breathed, running from 1980 to 1989. It was a character-driven strip featuring a heavy dose of political commentary, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1987. The cast tended to shift over the years, but some of the main characters were:

Milo Bloom, a young boy with a sardonic streak. Unprincipled editor of the local newspaper.

Michael Binkley, another boy, a wide-eyed dreamer.

Eventually, after many years, Berke Breathed ended the strip because he was tired of it and segued into a new one, Outland. Many of the regulars of Bloom County eventually leached back into that strip, as they later did again with Breathed's Sunday-only strip Opus.

Aborted Arc: In the early strips, most plotlines would be abandoned a few strips in, abruptly shifting to another setting. This happened some in later strips, too, i.e., the "Olive Loaf Vigilante" plot simply ceasing in the middle of Opus's trial, though a later comic revealed that he got off on a technicality.

In the third collection book (1984-86), there's a storyline where Opus is getting ready for a date, which just abruptly ends; even Breathed seems confused by this, and asks anyone who knows the identity of his date to please write in and tell him. Then a strip not too long after showed Opus participating in a wrestling match to impress a woman who is an obvious No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Cyndi Lauper. Breathed's comment for this strip reads "Oh, THAT'S who it was..."

Animated Adaptation: A Wish for Wings That Work was made into an animated special. During the Opus era, plans were made for a movie starring Opus et al. (which is why a line was drawn between his eyes), but it was canceled.

The Annotated Edition: The Complete Library has annotations to explain then-relevant pop-culture references and explain who the political figures being caricatured are. Breathed himself pops up from time to time to explain character origins or thought processes, but mostly just to tell us which strips he thinks are his crowning moments of funny and which are Old Shames.

Answer Cut: When Dallas, as lead singer and spokesman of the metal band Deathtöngue, negotiates a deal with CBS Records, he quotes the lyrics of their next song which includes "Let's run over Lionel Ritchie with a tank". Cut to the CBS CEO sitting in front of a huge autographed portrait of Lionel Ritchie.

Art Evolution: Look at any comic from 1980, then look at any comic from 1984, and then look at any comic from 1989. The differences are striking. More specifically, the art was very blobby and scratchy in the very first year, and then it started to ape Doonesbury for a while (something that even Berke Breathed himself admits to). Over time, it gradually became much finer and clearer, with Berke putting more detail into his inking and even crosshatching at times. The fine, crosshatched style carried over to successor Outland, and by the time he made Opus, he even changed up his coloring style drastically.

Author Avatar: It's probably just a coincidence but Cutter John has an uncanny resemblance to Berke. If one subscribes to this theory, it might cross into Gary Stu, given that Cutter was the Only Sane Man and one of the few truly Nice Guys in the cast.

Author Filibuster: The strip would sometimes launch into an Author Tract driven set of strips about something that had irked Berke; in one case, it was people turning right at red lights.

And of course, his misogynistic views...

Opus: We don't want anybody to get the idea that lately we've been saying women can't be trusted...Milo: Not at all.Opus: Not at all! Misses the point!Milo: By a mile!Opus: The point is that women... Or rather, women... You know... Women...Milo: ...will tear your heart out and serve it to the cat.Opus: I did not say that!

A Boy and His X: "A boy and his penguin" (or, in Opus's eyes, "A penguin and his boy"--or, per Binkley's dad's eyes, "Two dips and a dad.") in one early strip - Opus was originally Binkley's "pet," but later retconned to be just a regular penguin who lived on his own.

Bowdlerization: Happened occasionally. Fer instance, in the original strips' run, Bobbi Harlow's mother finds some Flintstones vitamins in her daughter's bathroom and freaks out because she thinks they're...pills. In the unaltered version, she freaks out because she thinks they're birth control pills.

Breakout Character: Opus didn't appear until the strip was six months old, and when he did it was a one-shot gag about Binkley buying a pet penguin. Opus soon became the central character.

Cerebus Syndrome: It started out as a rural humor strip, but as time went on they started adding more and more political and pop culture satire, which would dominate the strip for the rest of the run.

Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Many characters, including Major, Cutter John, Lola Granola, Yaz Pistachio, etc. Some were justified in that they were Flat Characters that Berkley didn't know what to do with. He has also said that he got rid of Cutter John because he found it too hard to draw a wheelchair within the confines of a comic strip.

For its first year or so, the strip focused on the denizens of the Bloom boarding house, including the Russian character Pops Popolov; a talking dog named Rabies (retired because Berke thought there were too many comic dogs); Widow Tucker and her cat, Spartacus; a Hunter S. Thompson copy named Mr. Limekiller; and so on. By the end of year two, the entire house, with the exception of Milo, Binkley, and their respective father figures, had been axed.

Lampshaded in a strip late in the comic's run which reveals what happened to some of the characters who had vanished, giving most of them tragicomic fates.

There were several more forest animals who were suddenly written out of the strip, including a bear; most had never even been given names. The only survivors were Hodge Podge and Portnoy.

This happened in Outland as well. An otter character named Tim W. Forty disappeared early in the strip's run, without explanation. Again, this was probably a case of Berke not knowing what to do with the Flat Character he'd created.

Justified (as in Judiciously Mandated) in the case of Mortimer Mouse: it was put him on the bus or face the wrath of Disney's lawyers. Of course Berke being Berke he flung the muck to the last strip, even to the point of identifying the bite-mark in Mortimer's ear as "Michael Eisner's teeth-marks".

The only people who lasted to the end of Outland were characters from Bloom County, who would just sort of sneak their way back into the series... sort of making the cancellation of Bloom County moot.

Color Me Black: Oliver Wendell Jones invented a gadget that temporarily turned white people black, and Cutter John was going to take it to D.C. and use it on the ambassador from South Africa (this was still the time of apartheid, so the ambassador would have been white).

He first tests it on a clueless Steve, who doesn't notice until three strips later, and assumes it's part of a Karmic Twist Ending before searching the nearby bushes for Rod Serling.

Corrupt Corporate Executive: Donald Trump, in the body of Bill the Cat, is ultimately responsible for the destruction of the strip's setting, even paving over Opus' dandelion patch. Also W. A. Thornhump.

Disabled Love Interest: He may be in a wheelchair, but Cutter John is a perfect gentleman, plays Star Trek with his animal friends, and won the heart of Bobbie and would regularly passionately make out with her in the meadow... that is until she vanished from the comic.

Disabled Means Helpless: Played around with Cutter John. He's just as manly and tough as any other typical 80's guy, but he still has to deal with problems such as the brakes malfunctioning while going downhill, or his chair tipping over and refusing to be helped up.

Don't Sneak Up On Me Like That: In "The Great Bloom County Snake Massacre", several main characters set out to kill a snake at the local swimming hole. In one strip Binkley is carrying a club when the groundhog Portnoy comes up behind him, touches his shoulder and says "See anything?" Binkley, scared out of his mind, starts wildly swinging the bat around and knocks Portnoy unconscious.

End of Series Awareness: The last few weeks are replete with this trope, as the characters are "fired" and try to find jobs in other comic strips (Steve Dallas turns up as one of Cathy's dates, Oliver integrates The Family Circus, Milo appears in The Far Side, etc.). At one point, Opus even laments that "comic strips aren't supposed to end!", and in one of the last strips, summarily boots Ronald Ann through the doorway to Outland, reasoning that "she was dawdling, and Beetle Bailey is taking over this space Monday."

Expy: By Breathed's own admission, Limekiller (the wacky vagrant from the first couple of years) was heavily inspired by Doonesbury's Uncle Duke.

Extremely Overdue Library Book: During one strip, Binkley was visited by the Closet of Anxieties creature. The latter found a book in the Closet and fetches Mrs. McCreevy. Binkley then remembers that was a library, a giant axe was flung over Binkley's head and hits the wall. She then appeared, holding another axe, and states:

Mrs.McGreevy: "119 weeks overdue, dear..."

Eye Pop: Lampshaded both in a strip and in A Wish for Wings That Work.

Good Lawyers, Good Clients: Subverted. Steve Dallas's clients are generally homicidal maniacs on trial for murder. Steve usually ends up getting them let off, with disastrous results. In a memorable instance, a little old lady on trial for killing her husband is put under house arrest--in Steve's house. He tries to sell the film rights to Disney.

Only after the other studios pass because the axe murders didn't involve any nubile, scantily clad young women.

His Name Is--: One arc is kicked off when Spuds McKenzie says that one of the strip's cast is a "secret female"...and then promptly passes out before she can say who. Opus lampshades this by remarking to the reader "You and I both know she's not going to wake up until that last statement has wreaked total havoc around here."

Hypno Fool: Oliver would occasionally hack local TV channels to broadcast subliminal messages to his parents, like "put bologna on your head and stick zucchinis up your nose" or "forget to wear clothes to church tomorrow". Subverted in one instance where Mr. Jones blames him for Mrs. Jones liking Dan Quayle as a politician, and Oliver insists that he's innocent on this one; as his father spanks him, Oliver thinks to himself "Gonna be a looong four years..."

Hypocritical Humor: One storyline about the excesses of image-driven consumerism ends with Milo, who had been the most outspoken opponent of rampant consumerism, buying a $100+ pair of shoes specifically made for walking in shopping malls.

I Am Not Weasel: Hodge Podge kept making snide commentary towards Portnoy the groundhog, by saying that he was a "pig".

I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: Bloom County tackled the "War On Drugs" topic with various drug avatars, including "Snorting Dandelions" and "Cat Sweat Hair Growth Tonic."

Insistent Terminology: In one arc, Opus becomes a garbageman, but insists that he be called a "waste management artisan".

Heck, Opus almost exclusively pursued human women as girlfriends. The interspecies part pretty much never came up. Instead, women would be put off by Opus's lack of height, large nose, etc. One strip also had a woman putting an ad in the classifieds for a small waterfowl with a large nose which she would like to lavish "kisses and affection" upon. She gives her address to Opus (who was working in the Classified section at the time), leaving him to comment "With God as my witness, I haven't the slightest idea what I should do."

Karmic Twist Ending: Spoofed in the arc where Oliver invents a device that turns people black. He uses it on a clueless Steve who, upon finally noticing, assumes it's punishment for occasional racism, delivering an imagined Rod Serling narration (to which Binkley responds "Ooh, sounds like a good episode!") and finally looking in some bushes for Rod.

Last-Name Basis: (Michael) Binkley, to everyone else, including his own dad.

Mathematician's Answer: In the first election series, Milo grills Limekiller to see if he's Presidential material by asking "How do you stand on nuclear waste?" Limekiller's response is to balance precariously on one foot, which Milo approves.

Meaningful Name: Oliver seems to be a reference to Oliver Wendell Holmes, but what a nerdy black kid has to do with a former Supreme Court Justice....

Also, Senator Bedfellow's last name derives from the expression "Politicians and Businessmen make strange bedfellows", which refers to doing secret or dirty business (such as taking bribes, for instance) while in political office.

Missing Episode: For the longest time, Berke declined to reprint a very large number of strips, including most of the first two years, mostly because he found them unfunny and/or outdated. Platypus Comixarchived a great deal of the missing strips ages before the first archive book (1980-1982) was released.

Moral Guardians: Hilariously subverted. In one series of strips, Lola Granola's mother (who has never liked Opus) sics the local priest on him. However, the priest is a very nice guy, and genuinely enjoys the music put out by Opus' death metal band[1]. You better believe Mrs. Granola wasn't happy with him.

"HE SITS IN THE FREEZER AND EATS FISH ENTRAILS!"

Mushroom Samba: A story arc had Oliver extracting the hallucinogenic chemical from dandelions for testing, only for his father to drink the entire beaker. He ends up in the tool shed, yelling about Erik Estrada coming out of his belly button.

Nailed to the Wagon: Binkley once forced his father to quit cigarettes cold turkey by disposing of all of those in their house. The strip didn't explain why the father didn't go out and buy more.

Never Trust a Hair Tonic: One arc features a compound made from cat sweat, originally intended as an underarm deodorant, which causes massive hair growth wherever it's applied. Its creator immediately turns it into a hair tonic instead. Sales are ridiculously, dangerously good for a while... and then customers' hair started falling out. As in, all at once, poof-gone-you're-a-bowling-ball.

No Indoor Voice: FINALLY, A CHANCE FOR L.H. PUTTGRASS TO SPEAK HIS MIND, TO REACH THE PEOPLE, TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. THE MASSES MUST BE TOLD OF MY IDEAS, FOR THEY ARE OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE. THUS, L.H. PUTTGRASS WOULD LIKE YOU TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HE FEELS IS LACKING IN THE WORLD.

"Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: One strip had new father Hodgepodge wearing a bib which holds bottles to "allows the modern father to share in the experience of breast-feeding". After a Beat Panel, Hodge turns to the reader and says "That's it. The joke is that we're not kidding."

One-Hour Work Week: Cutter John is particularly extreme example; in his first two strips, it's mentioned that he's the new doctor in town. We never actually see him doing anything remotely medical the entire time he's in the strip.

Out of Focus: Milo Bloom, originally the central character, disappeared from the later run of the comic.

Playful Otter: Tim W. Forty, an early Outland character. He was not well-received by the fanbase and chucked within the first few months.

Parodied in a one-shot Sunday strip, where an oil-coated otter cheerfully tells the readers that oil spills aren't nearly as big a deal as people say. Opus bursts in, shames the otter, and quickly discovers that the otter was paid in oysters by Exxon.

Real Life Writes the Plot: At one point Breathed was forced to take time off after an accident left him temporarily in a body cast. When he resumed Bloom County, he had Steve Dallas get in a fight with Sean Penn so Steve too would end up in a body cast for a few months.

Reclusive Artist: In the last thirty years there have only been a handful of photos of Berke, and outside of his career history, very little is known about him.

The Bloom Boarding House was retconned very early on, with Milo and Binkley being placed in their own houses.

Opus was originally Binkley's pet.

Samus Is a Girl: The quest to find the "secret female" on the cast sparked by Spuds MacKenzie hitting on Opus (and conveniently passing out before telling who it was...which was also Lampshaded by Opus at the time) resulted in Rosebud the Basselope being outed as female.

Self-Deprecation: Yaz Pistachio asks Opus to suggest one name more embarrassing than her own. His answer? "Berkeley Breathed."

It was first broken on August 9, 1981, when Major announced that he and Milo were going on strike. In the next-to-last panel, a hand reaches down and redraws them, putting them both in dresses, to which Milo asks, "You had to provoke him, didn't you?"

It wasn't broken again until November 12, when Bobbi Harlow told Cutter John that he wouldn't be receiving a kiss because "this is the comics page."

For the rest of 1981–1982, the strip usually kept its fourth wall intact, save for the occasional Aside Glance or Medium Awareness. By the end of Bloom County, those tropes were increasing in number, along with instances of Fourth Wall Mail Slot (which didn't use actual reader mail), script-reading, talking to the audience, interaction with the cartoonist and Who Writes This Crap? comments, etc. By the end in 1989, it was very much at the No Fourth Wall end of the scale. At the end, the characters were even moving on to work at other strips.

Snap Back: There was a storyline about runaway consumerism, where Opus buys a pair of sneakers made only for walking around malls, a salad shooter, a salad scooper, and even silicone-injected lips. Throughout, Milo chastises Opus for such impulsive behavior of buying needless things. At the end of the storyline, he discovers that Milo bought the same kind of mall-walker sneakers and shouts "I'm a-keepin' my new lips!" His old lips are back the next Monday.

Subverted in a similar plotline. Opus got plastic surgery for a new nose, and in this case actually kept it for a little while, until the rest of the cast forced him to get the surgery for his old nose back. We even got to see him recover from it.

Milo: IS THE GUY WHO OWNS THE RED CORVETTE PARKED OUTSIDE IN THE HANDICAPPED SPACE IN HERE? HELLO? ...Actually, it's remarkably similar to the kind of car you own, Steve. The guy had backed it in and locked the transmission, making it totally impossible to get out...
(Beat Panel)Milo: (holds up a mangled transmission) ...not to say we didn't try.Steve:Ptewph!

Status Quo Is God: Usually subverted, such as in the case of Steve's personality flip-flop and Bill getting his brain replaced with Donald Trump's, but seems to be the motive in annulling Lola Granola and Opus' marriage a few strips after they did the deed, even though Lola was Opus' fiancee for quite some time.

Strange Minds Think Alike: In the arc where Opus goes to prison, both he and Steve initially assume that his cellmate's statement of "I strangled Oakland" is a "colorful sports metaphor". It's not, he strangled each and every person in Oakland by hand.

Straw Feminist: With the exception of Bobbi Harlow, any character who identified as a feminist would be a hairy-legged man-hater.

Strawman News Media: The Bloom County Tribune is staffed almost entirely by muckrakers who are perfectly willing to lie and make stuff up in order to sell papers. A Running Gag in the early years involved Milo calling up the local senator in order to get dirt, Twisting the Words to literally turn nothing into something.

Milo: So where'd you hide Jimmy Hoffa, Senator?Senator:I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE IS!Milo:(writing) "'We lost the body', Bedfellow admits."

Strawman Political: Any opposing force (political, societal, economic, etc.) is generally represented by a harried-looking crazed figure running into the strip and spazzing out. In early years this was best exemplified by the corrupt, alcoholic Senator Bedfellow who perpetually wins re-election because nobody else runs. Milo's grandfather was also used as a strawman conservative in the early years.

Not to mention an arc where Milo discovers that if you play Billy and the Boingers (the cast's heavy metal band) records backwards, you hear "Go to church, say your prayers." Which led to something that readers never thought they would see Milo say: "I don't think I have a story."

Opus also read a parody of the Garfield books called Garfield Gets Old.

Not to mention Bill started out as a spoof on Garfield and comic merchandising (see quote under Ensemble Darkhorse entry above)...ironic considering Bill's later blitz merchandising.

Spuds McKenzie has a paternity suit filed against him by Benji, is later revealed to be female, and is replaced as Budweiser spokesman by the Care Bears.

And Benji was later revealed to be a non-pregnant Hare Krishna. It was a weird arc.

A particularly ridiculous storyline was ended with Milo telling Opus that he was acting like a character in a bad comic strip. Opus, brought to his senses but shaken and vulnerable, asks Milo if he thinks Terry and the Pirates was a bad comic strip.

An unusually prescient Take That: at the end of a Star Wars parody, Luke Binkley decapitates George Lucas with a lightsaber, saying, "Jedi Knights don't wait 15 years for a sequel." In 1983.

Lampshaded in the collected editions, where Breathed's footnote says "I was off by one year. The funny thing is, George did seem to lose his head."

Bloom County's final Story Arc is rife with Take Thats, as all the characters try to get jobs at other comic strips. Steve Dallas shows up to take Cathy on a date; Milo Bloom's top half is swallowed by a snake in The Far Side; a busing order sends Oliver Wendell Jones to integrate The Family Circus; Portnoy and Hodge-Podge get jobs cleaning up after Marmaduke with giant pooper scoopers.

And as mentioned above, all this was brought on by Donald Trump (in Bill's body) buying Bloom County to turn into another testament to his massive ego.

For strips that parodied cartoon cats that featured characters such as Garfield and Hobbes, Bill Watterson retaliated hilariously with this comic. In response Berke Breathed said this:

"I have committed other thefts with a clean and unfettered conscience. Garfield was too calculated and too successful not to freely raid for illicit character cameos. Calvin and Hobbes was too good not to. Calvin creator Bill Watterson took these thefts in stride and retaliated in private with devastatingly effective illustrated salvos, hitting me in my most vulnerable places. Bill's sketch is an editorial comment on my addiction to the expensive sport of power boating and the moral compromises needed to fund it. That's me doing the kicking. The chap on the dock represents my cartoon syndicate boss, which says it all, methinks."

The "chap on the dock" in question is pointedly drawn to resemble Mr. Thornhump.

Perhaps Berke's riskiest Take That came when the Disney corporation threatened to sue him if he didn't get rid of Mortimer Mouse (no, not that Mortimer Mouse), a character who looked like a washed-up, chain-smoking Mickey. Breathed removed Mortimer...but not before doing a three-week storyline in which he is kidnapped by then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner. The gang storms the Magic Kingdom to rescue him, and many copyrighted Disney characters make unauthorized cameos. Eisner himself is portrayed as a petty, creatively-bankrupt bully, who in the finale is attacked with a chainsaw by Bill the Cat dressed as Jason Voorhees.

Vanity License Plate: At least two shown in Opus: a sports car with "NTITLED", and a Hummer with "HUM HER."

One was mentioned but not seen in an early Bloom County strip, with Bobbi Harlow commenting on Steve Dallas' car: "Charming. A gold jeep with a license plate that spells out HORNY." In other editions, this was bowdlerized to "HEY BABY."

Weird Trade Union: Santa's elves went on a strike, and were fired by Ronald Reagan, in a 1982 series of strips that referenced the air traffic controllers' strike. Later on, the "comic strip characters' union" went out for larger panels.

W.A. Thornhump was created precisely as a strikebreaker character, the strip's personification of Executive Meddling.

What Are Records?: One Sunday strip for the revived Opus franchise actually dealt with this, in regards to newspapers of all things. Opus actually had to explain to the guy at least three times what a newspaper was, with each explanation being different.

Done as well in Bloom County, when Binkley asks his dad what the phrase "to wind one's watch" means.

Who Would Want To Read Us?: Bloom County characters make many self-deprecating remarks about the quality of the strip they appear in. In one storyline, Opus is an aspiring cartoonist struggling to come up with a comic strip. He pitches an idea for a comic strip exactly like Bloom County, to which Milo replies "Needs work."

Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Binkley's dad's attitude toward his son in the early years. When he reappeared after a hiatus of several years, he had basically become a grown-up version of Binkley.

"Steve Dallas...a frat-boy lawyer who I knew in school. He's never written me. I suspect he was shot by an annoyed girlfriend, which has saved me many legal fees." --Berkeley Breathed, in volume one of Bloom County: The Complete Library.

Zeerust: The 1987 arc dealing with Opus and Lola's wedding had him get knocked out trying to kiss her and dreaming about their life in twenty years. Apparently in 2007, Lee Iacocca will be President, we'll need ozone shields, and test-tube babies will be grown by Oscar Mayer.

↑Reacting to a song with the lyrics "Let's guillotine grandma/and put grandpa in the soup" with "Something to slip into the hymns next Sunday!", and giving Opus lyrics advice: "'Clearsil messiah from my shelf' doesn't quite rhyme with 'Zapping zits from here to Hell.'" "Gotcha."